


Fair Play

by DrPearlGatsby



Series: Corporate Espionage [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Corporate Espionage, F/M, GingerRoseWeek2020, Hux is having a bad day, Making out in a closet, Rose is undercover, author does not actually know what goes on in a fancy club, background dark!Rey and Kylo Ren, in which Rose accidentally seduces Hux?, or maybe not-so-accidentally, setting: a fancy club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:07:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24159361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrPearlGatsby/pseuds/DrPearlGatsby
Summary: Rose curses her luck. Itwouldbe tonight that one of the jammers goes out. It would behimwho finds the one spot in all of Club Canto Bight in which he can make a phone call. But if she refuses to make the fix, she’ll be called before club management. She’ll be let go, ruining months of hard work and rapport-building.No. You’ve got this, she tells herself, walking quietly down the hall behind Hux, willing him not to turn around.(In which no one's evening goes exactly to plan.)
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Series: Corporate Espionage [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1743481
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42
Collections: GingerRoseWeek2020





	Fair Play

**Author's Note:**

> It's a bit late (because it got away with me--where did all these words come from?!), but here's my fic for Day Three of [GingerRose Week](https://gingerrose-hub.tumblr.com/post/614909019904163840/gingerrose-week-2020), filling the prompt "Spy/Undercover."
> 
> This fic is a companion to a Reylo fic I wrote for Reylo Week 2020, but I don't think you necessarily have to read that one to get what's going on here.

“Mitaka? Hello? Mitaka! I said, check for an email. _Email_. Is there anything—hello?”

Rose curses her luck. It _would_ be tonight that one of the jammers goes out. It would be _him_ who finds the one spot in all of Club Canto Bight in which he can make a phone call. But if she refuses to make the fix, she’ll be called before club management. She’ll be let go, ruining months of hard work and rapport-building. _No. You’ve got this_ , she tells herself, walking quietly down the hall behind Hux, willing him not to turn around. When she reaches the concealed door within the hallway, she throws her hair over one shoulder so as to obscure her face from his view, grateful that the standard calls for hair to be worn long and sleek.

She feels rather than sees him in the corner of her eye, turning back toward her in the moment she fishes the key to the door out of where she’s stashed it in the front of her dress. Her cheeks color a little at the thought that he’s witnessed _that_ particular move, but it was honestly practical. It’s not as if the skintight dress comes with _pockets_.

Soon she’s extracted what she needed, walking the ladder a few paces down the hallway where she’ll be able to reach the correct panel in the ceiling and setting to work.

**.**

“Hello? Mitaka?” There’s no answer, and Hux hangs up the phone again, infuriated. That’s the third time he’s tried calling his most trusted colleague and had the signal drop. He paces back and forth in the hallway, watching for his phone to register more than one bar of service, and sees that the bottle service girl is doing something even _more_ improbable: she’s standing on a ladder, poking a screwdriver at something in the ceiling.

It’s absurd. Every single moment of this evening has been absurd, and for a moment Hux stands transfixed, trying to comprehend the layers of unreality. That Ray Palpatine turned out to be a woman, spelled R-E-Y. That she quickly set to work seducing Kylo Ren and has in all likelihood already succeeded. That they were set up by Snoke, who will fire them for failing in spite of having already made the deal that sealed their fate. That he seems to be trapped in some sort of phone-call purgatory, repeating the same few sentences to a static-y line, doomed regardless. And now—that a woman in the club’s standard bottle-girl costume of a strappy, blue-sequined dress and matching heels is balancing in her heels on a _ladder_ in the middle of the hallway.

Hux thinks he must be in shock; he finds himself unable to look away. She’s short, with wide hips and jet-black hair; and even in the dim light of the empty hallway he can make out some of the particulars of her curves.

The phone vibrates in his hand— _Mitaka_. Hux jumps back to reality, whirling around and answering. “Yes? Hello?”

“You keep—ng out. Y—nted me to ch—s—but I’m n—”

“Snoke. _Did he send an email_.”

“C—ear—’re saying.”

Hux takes one step forward, one step back, trying to correct his positioning to get a signal. “Mitaka?” he keeps repeating as he moves. Finally he takes another step backward and he gets a complete sentence:

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for. Hux, can you hear me?”

“I can!” Hux practically shouts, he’s so keyed up. “Mitaka, I need you to—” His phone makes the telltale “hang up” sound.

Hux wrenches the thing away from his ear, letting out a string of curses. There’s no reception, no 4G or wifi signal, no _nothing_ : just him, his stupid asshole supervisor, and doom in the form of a skinny woman in lipstick and a suit. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

Hux goes to stalk out of the hallway, but as he nears the woman on the ladder he sees that she’s beginning to climb down. She’s nearly at the ground when she seems to suddenly notice how close he is, and she wobbles on her heels. The next thing he knows, Hux is acting on an instinct he doesn’t even know he _has_ , and he catches her by the forearms, steadying her.

**.**

_Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck_. He’s figured her out. This isn’t the plan— _this isn’t the plan_. Leia’s not ready yet; they’re still two weeks out _at least_ from the moment when Rose is supposed to corner Armitage Hux with their proposition. She’s not even sure what he’s doing here tonight, and she’s seized by a sudden terror that he _knows_. He’ll report her. They’ll lose all their credibility—

Rose winces, waiting for whatever bad thing is bound to come next, but all he says is, “What the hell are you doing climbing a ladder in those shoes?”

_He doesn’t know_. “Ah,” Rose tries to make her voice a little higher than usual, grabbing at the ladder and trying to lower her feet to solid ground, at the same time removing herself from his grasp. “They’re part of the uniform.”

“Yet another stupid decision on the part of the owners of this hellhole,” he sneers, and then Rose feels him move from behind her. She exhales, turning to watch him pass by, when suddenly he turns back around. “And another thing. The reception in this place is—” He stops, his eyes going wide. He’s stepped back into her space, and she almost has to crane her neck up to see him, he’s so tall and standing so close. “ _You_.”

**.**

Hux knows her face in an instant. She’s the girl from Resistance who cost them thousands of dollars in legal fees, the one who filled out a phony job application just to get pocket-camera footage of Snoke to use against them. Hux never found out what happened in the video, as it was destroyed before it made onto the internet; all he knows is it was expensive. That she’s here now—tonight, right _now_ —can’t possibly be a coincidence.

The surprise on her face quickly changes to defiance, and she clenches her fists at her sides. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you again, but you know I’d be lying.”

“I know what this is,” Hux hisses, “and it isn’t going to work.”

The girl blanches. Hux knows her name is Rose Tico. She’s a tech genius, an extrovert with a sunny smile, one of the least-suspicious people Resistance employs. No one would suspect her of corporate sabotage, the cute, curvy girl who always looks for the good in people. He’s read that naïve quote of hers from college, the one that says, “We’re going to win—not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.” He’s read just about everything there is out there about her, actually, ever since she tried to take down First Order and he was ordered to gather information.

“All ‘this’ is is me trying to do my job,” she huffs. “I fix tech for Canto Bight. Get over it. This isn’t about _you_.”

Hux can’t possibly miss, as she scowls up at him now, how her bosom strains at the fabric of the dress. He’d seen her, minutes earlier, extract the key—as if _that_ wasn’t part of this too, that and the eyeliner and lipstick meant to make her appear even more enticing.

“I know for a fact it isn’t. Whatever hidden camera you’ve got going this time, it isn’t going to work. Go seduce some other corporate bigwig.”

**.**

He’s standing _so_ close to her now, this man she’s been researching for weeks to prepare to make a deal with him. It’s almost strange, being so close to him after reading so many weird, bland-sounding facts about him. He has an expensive city apartment, which he keeps impeccably clean but spends almost no time in. He owns an orange cat named Millicent. He jogs regularly, pays for a meal subscription service but often gives away his boxes to neighbors because he isn’t home to use them. He listens to podcasts about food. He donates a higher-than-normal percentage of his yearly income to a battered women’s shelter. And but for regular messages exchanged with his superior, Kylo Ren, and his subordinate, Dopheld Mitaka, he doesn’t seem to have friends or family. For all intents and purposes, he lives a quiet, lonely life; and this close up, Rose adds one more fact to the list: he’s _beautiful_. His hair looks soft. Even his eyelashes are a light ginger color.

“Seduce?” Rose squeaks, in spite of herself.

His lovely pale skin blushes red, starting at his neck and traveling up to his ears; and one lock of his hair flops around as he hisses at her, “Don’t pretend you didn’t tailor that dress to your _assets_ —”

“It was the only one they had!” Rose actually loathes the fit of the dress, hating how it makes her breasts look even wider, how it clings so closely so as to show the outline of her not-exactly-flat stomach. She swats away at the inner voice that tells her how pretty his eyes are, how _this means he thinks you look good_ —it does her absolutely no good to moon over him.

Hux rolls his eyes. “I’m not falling for it. Just like you didn’t mean to stumble on the ladder—”

“You think I _wanted_ to talk to you?”

“—or corner me in this hallway while Ren is occupied by Palpatine. Did Sith hire you to do this? Are you a turncoat to Resistance? Or does Sith own Resistance now, too?”

Rose starts to recall Hux’s phone conversation, thinking back to one of Leia’s theories from last week. _If Sith struck a deal with First Order…_

**.**

Her eyes go wide, her voice a little softer but no less urgent. “Snoke trapped you, didn’t he?”

Hux sets his jaw. The “surprised” act is really starting to get to him—unless—unless she _didn’t_ know. Unless that _isn’t_ why she’s here. “What were you doing up there in the ceiling?” He takes another step into her space, crowding her up against the ladder, his voice low.

Rose glances down the hallway, which has remained empty this whole time. “Look,” she says urgently. “I—this is bigger than some hidden camera bullshit, okay? Come with me.” And then she’s grabbing his wrist and urging him toward the closet the ladder came from.

For whatever reason, Hux allows this. He’s disgusted—disgusted at how effective her seduction act has worked on him, at how it’s still his instinct to stay loyal to a company Ren seems determined to run into the ground, at how he’s really not sure what will become of him beyond this point. He’s going to lose his job in the morning—probably all his prospects, too. The thought of it makes his blood boil until it occurs to him that there’s another option. If Rose is working for Resistance, who have always had it out for First Order… maybe there’s another way.

There’s scarcely enough room in the storage closet for them to stand, much less to have a normal conversation. Hux has to stoop over slightly so as not to knock into the hanging lightbulb with his head, and Rose’s body presses up against his in the cramped space. Hux imagines the cold shower in his future and cants his hips backwards, determined not to let Rose know what he’s feeling.

Hux surprises them both by speaking first. “First Order is dissolving. Sith is buying it out from under us, probably as we speak.”

“Leia Organa will give you a job if you can feed us the info we need.”

_Ah_ , Hux thinks with some relief. _So our goals align after all_. He asks anyway, “What are Organa’s goals?”

“To end unethical practices. Break nefarious contracts, move to a sustainable manufacturing model, give artists more control over their work, raise minimum wage. Generally, to stop First Order—or else force its hand to set better industry standards.”

Hux listens attentively, trying very, very hard not to focus on the subtle way her breasts move against him when he speaks.

**.**

On the inside, Rose is celebrating. _I can’t believe we’re fucking doing this. I can’t believe he’s fucking considering. Holy shit. I didn’t even_ do _anything_.

“Spoken like a true bleeding heart,” he finally sneers, ruining the moment.

“Spoken like a true corporate pig.” She stomps on his foot, purely out of spite, the aggressive energy in the closet getting to be a bit too much for her.

But then his hands are gripping at her forearms again, his pupils blown wide and dark, and she realizes she’s smelling his cologne—it’s good, probably expensive. He brings his face down close to hers. “Say. That. Again.”

Rose instead bites a corner of her lip, daring him. She’s seen that expression on a man before, and now that he’s tugged her even closer she’s pretty sure she can feel the hard outline of him through his pants. She finds she doesn’t mind the idea of kissing him, doesn’t mind the idea of doing a great number of intimate things with him. She presses her body closer into his, chasing a little of the delicious pressure that stokes the flame of her own arousal. She wonders what it would be like to take him into her mouth.

Hux swallows visibly. His eyes flicker briefly away from hers, landing on her lips before darting back. When finally he closes the meager distance between them, it’s hot and sloppy and frantic, all tongues and teeth and a soft groan at the back of his throat—it’s his hands gripping at her hair, palming her breasts, cupping her ass and pulling her in closer so he can grind into her—and Rose knows she’s won. He tastes like weak vodka and victory.


End file.
